If you search Google for a hotel, will Google find motels as well? No it won't, but it will find inns, lodging, and accommodations. Yes, Google has an 
extensive and context sensitive ability to equate your search terms with (what it judges to be) synonymous searches. This is useful for us when we search,
but it is also important to know when we are optimizing a website for the search engines.

If you are search engine optimizing your website to rank well on certain search terms it is useful to know what synonyms Google will recognize. For instance,
if "sustainable" is an important search term for you, then it would be useful to know if Google will treat "green" as a synonym for "sustainable". The answer is
no, Google does not treat sustainable and green as synonyms so for the website I am working on right now, we'll have to optimize for both search terms.

Is there a way to figure out which synonyms Google recognizes? Yes, it's easy. Send me an email and I will reply with an explanation of how to do your own
synonym research. Email me at Olin@NorthStarInternet.com

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I have a question for you…how do you measure your positions in Google? (and Yahoo! and Bing)

Do you open your browser and do some searches on your most important keywords and then look for your website in the results? That takes some time and will give you an indication of where your website ranks, but not a very good one. You see, Google personalizes the results you get when you do a search, in an effort to bring you the best results based on the wealth of information they have about your searching and browsing history. That’s great when you are searching for something, but it skews your results when you are trying to measure how well your own website ranks.

What you really need is an objective SERP report – Search Engine Result Positions or Search Engine Relative Positions – and there are a number of services out there that offer that. Search Google for “free SERP reports” and you’ll find a number of services available to you. These services will provide more objective results and it is faster than doing the searching yourself.

One such service worth considering is Authority Labs (www.AuthorityLabs.com) where you can set up a free account with up to 10 keywords. Your positions will be updated daily, and you can log in any time and check them. If you need to track more than 10 keywords, give us a call and we can set you up with as many keywords as you’d like for less money than your own Authority Labs subscription will cost. 928.282.1396.

All the best to you…

Olin Robie

PS – If you would like to know more about “search personalization”, drop me an email or reply to this post…

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